League Notes

Fall Series On A Two-Week Break As PGA
Tour Heads To Asia For Tournaments

ESPN.com's Bob Harig wrote after building a "mini-wave of momentum" with its Fall Series, the PGA Tour now "takes a two-week break before concluding its official money season at the Children's Miracle Network Classic at Walt Disney World, adding to the maddening nature in which the golf season mercifully comes to an end." The Tour instituted this break so that it "can take its product overseas." This week's CIMB Asia Pacific Classic Malaysia is the Tour's "foray into sanctioning a tournament in Asia." But while "trying to open new doors in an emerging growth market is behind this endeavor," it is "hard to see the tournament as anything more than a big-money perk that might get a few guys over to the region" (ESPN.com, 10/27).

A VIEW FROM ACROSS THE POND: In London, Oliver Brown writes it is "difficult not to muster a little sympathy" for NFL players. They are "forced to tolerate a rigid salary cap unthinkable in the 'anything goes' Wayne Rooney-populated world of soccer-nomics." In addition, the average NFL career is "under four years," and football is "so acutely, repetitively violent that they are expected to die two decades younger than the typical American male." NFL team owners also now "have a recession to worry about," and that "austerity has neither trammelled their love of conspicuous largesse nor curbed their habit of rank hypocrisy" (London TELEGRAPH, 10/28).

HEADING BACK TO SCHOOL: In Dallas, Rick Gosselin notes he attended Saturday's Michigan State-Northwestern football game, and "try as it might, the NFL has been unable to match the game-day experience of a college campus." Gosselin: "Maybe it was the free on-campus parking that was attractive to me. Maybe it was the walk across campus to the stadium -- it sure beats the acres of pavement you find in NFL stadium parking lots." College football is a "great experience without the blatant commercialism that you find at games on Sundays" (DALLAS MORNING NEWS, 10/28).